blue artichoke

It's just too hot to turn on the oven, and a pain to make muffins in multiple batches in the toaster oven. So we had spinach & mushroom omelets, soysage and cantaloupe for breakfast. Healthier, for sure.

Here's a story about an amazing spider that illustrates how mean I can be. Several days ago while watering the plants on the front porch, I found an unusual looking spider. It was a fat spider, mostly black but with odd white blops and line markings, and it hopped from leaf to leaf on the plant I was watering. We've had our share of scary inside spiders and even scarier invisible spiders that bite us during the night, so I'm not such a fan of spiders, but I tend to leave outside bugs and spiders alone. But, I trapped this guy in a small jar, screwed the lid on tight and set it aside to identify later. I forgot about it; left the poor thing in a closed jar outside in 90+ degree heat for several days. At least it was in the shade. Even so, I figured I broiled the guy. I went outside this morning, opened the jar and found that he had spun a mighty web across the opening of the jar, and was inside, still alive! He jumped out onto my hand, I screeched, shook him off and dropped the jar. He scurried under a chair. I retrieved the jar (unbroken) and clamped it down on top of him and drug it back out from under the chair. When I lifted the jar, I discovered that, in dragging him, I had removed five of his rear legs, leaving him with the two front long ones and one shorter one on one side. Little fellow started dragging himself back under the chair with his remaining legs. He's a survivor, that one. I felt so bad that I had ripped off most of his legs. I let him go. He's really a neat looking spider. I looked him up and found out that he's a jumping spider, who stalks prey and leaps on top for the kill. Now I feel worse. Gimpy spider can't jump with just 3 legs, so after surviving extreme heat, oxygen deprivation and dismemberment, he'll starve to death. I feel terrible. I'm tempted to go offer to let him bite me for revenge, or to euthanize him with my flip flop. Either way, I'm expecting some sort of full scale spider retaliation.

In other news, corn and I are BFF, and to prove my devotion, this is Corn Week. I bought a dozen ears of fresh corn at the farmer's market yesterday. We had grilled corn on the cob last night for dinner. I grilled some extra ears for a corn salad later in the week. (I tell you what, it's way too hot to be standing over a grill. My grilling days are over until autumn!). I'll post corn recipes throughout the week. For the grilled corn, I shucked several ears and grilled over med-high heat for 12 minutes, turning every 3 minutes to evenly brown the kernels. I served it with chipotle butter, which I made by softening 1/2 cup of unsalted butter, then mixing that with 1 minced chipotle pepper and some adobo sauce, 1 T. lime juice, 1 t. cumin and 1/2 t. salt. Form a log, wrap in plastic and refrigerate to firm up. I have quite a bit of this butter left, so I used some of it this morning to make omelets. Yum.

Getting to Know All About You: What would you have done if you had spotted this beautiful jumping spider on your porch?